Use Facebook Ads Effectively to Grow Your Business with Meg Brunson

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Have you put a crap load of money into Facebook advertising only to hear crickets? You aren’t alone. Like many marketing things, there is an actual strategy required to be successful with Facebook ads. But where does one start? Should you wing it, should you DIY it, should you hire someone, what kind of budget do you look at? In today’s 360 Health Biz Podcast episode, we have Meg Brunson to break this all down for us…plus more!

Before you even start putting out Facebook ads, there are three things you absolutely MUST have..a proven product (with a proven sales funnel), and email list with an email sequence, and some money to play around with because like we have said in previous episodes, social media marketing is all about testing.

In addition to testing Facebook ads, in this episode we discuss:- the difference between a lead and a conversion- how Facebook ad algorithm works- what can & can’t be advertised on Facebook- the biggest things that health and wellness businesses get flagged for on Facebook- the do’s and don’t for ad images- how to write engaging Facebook ad copy- scheduling Facebook ads & the review process- Facebook pixels

Meg is a former Facebook employee who provides marketing support to parents who want to build their business without feeling guilt over the "balance" of family & entrepreneurship. Her clients enjoy predictable leads/traffic and positive ROI within 3 months - and spend more time making happy memories with their kids than they do stressed over their marketing.

Connect with us on social:instagram.com/360healthbizpodcastfacebook.com/360healthbizpodcast

@kendraperryinc@sleeplikeaboss_

TRANSCRIPTS

Christine H.: Hello everyone, and welcome to this new episode of the 360 Health Biz Podcast. Today, you are being greeted by my wonderful, sexy, beautiful, smart and [inaudible 00:00:14] today, cohost [Stace 00:00:17] Kendra. By myself, Christine Hansen. We also have a very, very special guest for you here, and it's very timely because we have a huge rant yesterday on YouTube about this topic. Strap your seat belt on because this is going to be a juicy one.

Christine H.: It's going to save you tons of money and it's going to make you tons of money, and what's not to love about that? Without further ado, we're going to introduce her, so Kendra, take it away.

Kendra: All right. We have Meg Brunson here. She is a former Facebook employee, which is very exciting, who provides marketing support to parents who want to build their business without feeling guilt over the balance of family and entrepreneurship. I love that. Your clients enjoy predictable leads, traffic, and positive ROI within three months, and spend more time making happy memories with their kids than they do stressing over their marketing. Awesome. Welcome Meg. Thank you for being here.

Meg Brunson: Thank you for having me.

Christine H.: Brilliant copy, by the way.

Meg Brunson: Well thank you.

Kendra: Well, I love that so much. Before we started and before we hit the record button, you were telling us a little bit about your life right now. You can tell us a little bit more about what you're up to and how you got into Facebook ads and Facebook marketing.

Meg Brunson: Yeah, so let me start back a little ways. I was always a little bit entrepreneurial, but for a long time I was just side hustling it until my third pregnancy. When I got terribly sick almost died at times, and told my husband, "I'm done punching a clock and I'm going to do this entrepreneurship thing full time. I'm going to make it work, I'm going to figure it out." That's what I did, I was kind of an accidental entrepreneur, as I like to call it. I had to figure out marketing.

Meg Brunson: At that time, it was a little bit different because this was, gosh, seven, eight years ago. Facebook marketing was totally different than it is now, but I leveraged it and loved it, and was very successful with it then. I quickly became kind of go-to-person in my circles for Facebook ads. This is a very abbreviated story. We moved across the country. I interviewed for a job at Facebook. I almost didn't even get the interview because they were like, "Wait, you were a criminal justice major and you've got no experience with traditional marketing channels. Are you sure this is job you want to apply for?"

Meg Brunson: I was like, "Oh, yeah. I've thrown myself into learning this stuff." They gave me the interview and were like, "We're going to test your knowledge, this isn't just" ... "Yeah, I'm fine. I'll do it." I interviewed, I got the job. I worked at Facebook for about a year, so it wasn't a terribly long time and it was quite simple [inaudible 00:02:59]. I tasted the entrepreneurial freedom and flexibility. I at that point had four children, and I just didn't want to punch a clock. I didn't want to put 40 hours in at any job, no matter how-

Kendra: Yeah. I get that.

Meg Brunson: -more present to my family. I left Facebook, I built my business on my own for two years before I left my four bedroom home. We piled my entire family, my husband and I, and four kids into a 35 foot RV. We've been traveling the United States for four months now, with the goal of hitting all 48 contiguous States in a year. We're 28 States in.

Christine H.: Wow. I'm a huge fan of tiny house nation and [OCA Haida 00:03:46] stuff. I can only imagine, but we did. Okay, I'm a drama queen. You have to know, I do love my luxuries, but we did 10 days of ... It's not [inaudible 00:03:57], it's much smaller. It's like one of these Kempster kind of things, like the California thing than where you have the car and you have your, you can lift the roof and stuff. We did make it happen, but it's just not my thing. Having four children in there, I'm like, "Woman, there's something different to you?"

Christine H.: I don't know. I'd use my mind entirely, but I think it's the best story ever. Yeah, obviously, it says as something I think about entrepreneurship. I agree, you can never go back. It's just once you know it, once that flame is kindled, there's just no way that it's ever going to go back. Facebook is just, it's the coolest thing in the world. I would know to say that I've worked for Facebook, it's just so fun. You could just have my coffee and it would have been fine.

Christine H.: What obviously was so interesting to us was that, your business that you've now been building is on Facebook ads. One of the things that we vented about was that, people even very beginner beginners. Let's say, people who happen a little bit in business but haven't really had lots of clients yet or who have maybe just created a course without even looking at what they can do or without experience of [inaudible 00:05:13] sold in different words, but in essence that Facebook ads is the silver bullet.

Christine H.: If you have a huge ad budget, you will see a return in investment guaranteed. I will quote, and the reason why I can run, I know a lot about this business because we both been working with Facebook managers. We've both invested tons of money and we did the whole, that was like a year ago, I would say. We did the whole weapon off funnel off thing and it went wrong in so many ways. We left a lot of money on the table.

Christine H.: We talked about how you actually need to know what you're selling, but I think it woke us a little bit through when is the golden time to actually say, "Okay, I'm ready for Facebook ads." Should you wing it, should you DIY it, should you hire someone, what kind of budget do you look at? Also, because we are in the health space, what are the challenges you might expect there that, let's say, if you hire someone who's only used to work with business coaches or with maybe product services, might not expect and probably gauge wrong.

Meg Brunson: Oh, there's so much.

Christine H.: Go ahead.

Meg Brunson: How much time do we have? I would say, before you start running Facebook ads, there's a couple of things that you should have clear. The first one is, I really honestly believe you should have a proven product that's made money. [crosstalk 00:06:46]. That's the most important part. But Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, he has enough money, so do not run ads on Facebook just to donate to his fund. He doesn't need your money. Do not be investing in Facebook ads until you have a plan to get that money back.

Meg Brunson: I think one of the number one mistakes I see people make is they're like, "Oh well, I just posted really good and Facebook told me if I spent $20, I would reach 10,000 more people and so I boosted the post." I'm [inaudible 00:07:21], "Did you make any money or I don't know. You just donated $10 to the Zuckerberg fund, you don't even know what it did for you." I tell people to ignore those little messages from Facebook.

Meg Brunson: Those are like the candy bars in the grocery store aisle. [inaudible 00:07:42], they're quick, they're easy. It's Facebook's way of getting you to experiment and spend some money, which I don't think is a bad idea. But I think people do it too quickly before they really even understand how Facebook ads work. I did the same thing. I'm going to be really honest here, we were in '70, I made some of the same mistakes. I was running Facebook ads and at the time, I was trying to get people to join my list. That was my number one goal.

Meg Brunson: I would boost posts then I would look at my list to be like, "Well, I got these many people and normally I get this many people so it's working, I think." Then I found ads manager and there were all these different ads you could run. I'm an official person, a creative artsy person. I created a couple and I was like, "Well, they all look the same, so it doesn't really matter. I'll just run this one."

Meg Brunson: Now I know better, that's not how ads work. Number one, have a proven product, meaning that you're getting sales from it. It's important to know that you're driving traffic to an offer that people want, that your copy is right. Maybe the product is fine but your copy is not right, so prove that funnel and you can get that traffic organically from Facebook groups.

Meg Brunson: There's so many ways to get those initial sales that just not require throwing a ton of money into Facebook ads. That's number one; you need to have a funnel, a product. You need to have an email list and an email sequence.

Kendra: [inaudible 00:09:25] with that. We have people who didn't even have list. They were selling stuff and they didn't have an email list. That was just like tears in my eyes, like seriously.

Meg Brunson: I've had clients that are like, "Oh no, I don't use an email service. Can you just email me each lead as they come in." I'm like, "You've got to get a list. You need a list." People will say email marketing is dead. One of the things that I think a lot of people do is; they look at themselves and they'll say, "I don't open a lot of promotional emails, therefore, nobody does," and it's not true.

Christine H.: No, it's not.

Meg Brunson: Email marketing is not that. You need to have a sequence.

Kendra: You do. I'm guilty of being [inaudible 00:10:05] investing and my funnel is one welcome email. But I do have a weekly blog post that's going out biweekly, once a week it's for sleep and the other week is business. I have something created every week. I have to say, most of my friends aren't on my email list. But I've really with looking with Instagram and things, and how unreliable it is, it's 2020, it's for me back to the email.

Kendra: I can [inaudible 00:10:31] priority focus. I left it aside a little bit, but now that I'm like, "Okay, I have everything set up." Actually, I can now really focus on it and have the subscribers. I purge often and I throw people out if they're inactive for 30 days and it leaves me with a really, really good pool of people. It's back in my priorities. I think you can do it in ways, you can say this [inaudible 00:10:56] a lot of time.

Kendra: It's not, I think the first thing you need to do to really focus on building the list. I think it focus on building the product, the list will have been part of it. But for sure, I totally agree that email marketing is dead, right? I can tell.

Meg Brunson: No matter what your field or your expertise at, there are other people who do what you do. I am not the only Facebook ads manager in the world, but I'm just not. No matter what you do, sleep, there are other people that do ... No matter what you do, so you have to think about that. If somebody wants your product or your service, they've got a selection of people to go with. You need to hook them with your freebie, get them onto your list.

Meg Brunson: Then, how many times do you buy a product that you've never heard of before? You don't. You like it, you follow it, you research it, you get more information and you make the purchase later. I've heard seven touches. It could take seven touches, sometimes it takes more, sometimes it takes them less. People need to know and trust you, and I feel like that's one of those cliche things that everybody sells. But it's cliche for a reason, because-

Kendra: I agree. Exactly. I think you need to know that they can trust you or they need to, right from the gate, know who you are. Which is why we teach how to use your own voice, how to even figure out what your voice is, so that you can shortcut the process. Because people usually don't follow me for a long time. It's impulse buying because they are [inaudible 00:12:29], but it's an exception. Mainly in-house, it is long stock before they get in touch. That's what it is [inaudible 00:12:38].

Meg Brunson: Yeah. I know I'm kind of jumping around, but having the email list, having a proven funnel and then I think having money to play with. I don't mean we're just going to throw money away here, but ads are not a guarantee. I have to tell people this, I feel like I'm the worst salesperson because I'm brutally honest.

Christine H.: No. We're honest. It's the best sales per se.

Meg Brunson: I had a woman say, "Well, you're not making me feel very confident about this." I was like, "Well, I think there's a lot of things you have to do before we're going to see the return. I'm happy to work with you through that, but I don't think we're going to see a return in the first two or three months." She's like, "Well, then-

Christine H.: Because I feel so many people take the hard-earned cash that they've just earned, and it's like the last hurrah. They're going to say, "Okay, now I'm just going to invest it in. That's what's going to help me to make it." What kind of budget do we even look at? Because I think people have no clue how much they could need to invest or even figure out what Facebook likes and what it doesn't. What are we talking about, is it just 100 bucks, is 1,000? I was amazed that, I think people have no clue.

Meg Brunson: It really depends upon your goals and it depends on your funnel. I'll break that down a little bit because I know that's fluffy and it doesn't really answer your question. I want to look at like a typical funnel, where you want to get a lead on your email list, and then you want to get a conversion. This is very basic, like two step right [inaudible 00:14:19]. The cost for getting one lead is going to be less than the cost for getting one conversion, right?

Meg Brunson: It just makes sense because there's less skin in the game, it's easier for somebody to make that decision. If you want to run a lead-ad, you're going to need to spend less money than if you're running a conversion. I'm just trying to break down those basics.

Christine H.: By the way, what's between lead and conversion?

Meg Brunson: A lead is an email. I'm going to give you this piece of value, whether it's an opt-in or a blog post, or whatever. I'm going to give you some value and you're going to give me your email. Now you've obtained a lead. There's two ways I should say. You can do that as a conversion ad, but you can also run it as a lead generation campaign. Which is, I'm going to be honest, my favorite. The difference is, the conversion ads, you're driving traffic to your website, to your opt-in page.

Meg Brunson: We've got it all nice and pretty email, and [inaudible 00:15:18]. Generation ad is, it's all on Facebook so you don't need an opt-in page. This is really great for people who are not as tech savvy, maybe they don't have a landing page builder or may be to be just have a WordPress website, and they don't have ClickFunnels, or Kartra, or Kajabi, or something. With the lead generation ads, when the user clicks the button to learn more or sign up, it's a pop-up window internally on Facebook.

Meg Brunson: It loads faster than your opt-in page; one, because it's internal and it will also automatically populate information from the user's Facebook page. If you're asking for email, it'll automatically populate the email. That either, they use to sign into Facebook with, the most recent email they've used on Facebook and another lead-ad. It makes it really quick and easy. It's mobile optimized and everything happens on mobile, everything. Mobile is like 95 something where they see less percent of Facebook traffic.

Meg Brunson: Lead-ads are really great. Then after they submit the information, you can direct them to a thank you page and you can use Zapier. Is a third-party integration tool to link Facebook lead-ads to whatever CRM you're using: Mailchimp ConvertKit, Kartra, Infusionsoft, literally anything. I really like that for generating leads because it's quick, it's easy and it works.

Meg Brunson: Then when I'm talking about conversions, I'm talking about selling your product or service. Whether it's a course or a strategy session, or something you're actually going to pop in the mail and send to them. [inaudible 00:16:58] because that requires money, so it's going to be more expensive. You might get leads for a dollar a lead, or sometimes they're more expensive. I also tell people, it depends upon your niche, what you're selling.

Meg Brunson: At one point last, I had two clients at the same exact time. One was getting leads for $25 per lead and one was getting leads for 25 cents a lead. They were both thrilled. It can be $5 leads. On the back-end, she was selling into a series of products that culminated up to $10,000 coaching plan. Her return justified the higher lead costs. Then the 25 cent leads were like a parenting blog and she was leveraging them to get more sponsors and stuff. That was really great for her.

Meg Brunson: There's not like a cost per lead that's baseline, but it really depends upon your business, your nerves and how you're able to convert them on the back-end after getting them on your list. Which is why that email metric sequence is not to be ignored. Understanding those basics, now I want to step back and explain how Facebook ad algorithm works. When you select what type of ad you want to run and the objective, your campaign level of those ads. In order for Facebook to optimize correctly, you need to get 50 of those actions, 50.

Meg Brunson: Here's what conversion, again, I feel like I use that word a lot and it means a lot of different things, but 50 of those actions in order for the campaign to optimize. What'll happen is, you're going to say, let's just use leads as an example, the lead-ad. You're going to run a lead-ad and you build an audience. Let's just say there's a million people in the audience. I'm going to try to keep numbers relatively easy.

Meg Brunson: Facebook at the very beginning is going to serve this ad out to some people in your audience. All million will not see it, some people. As people start to respond to get leads, Facebook's going to say, "Oh, so these four people responded, what makes them unique from the other 12 people who didn't respond yet?" Then it's going to try to find the people in your audience that are most likely to give you their lead information, so that it can optimize the process.

Meg Brunson: Facebook, many people do not [inaudible 00:19:41], but they want you to be successful. Yes, they want to take your money because they're a business and that's one way that they generate revenue. If you watched the Mark Zuckerberg in front of Congress, you learned that. But they want you to be successful because if you get what you want, you're going to spend more money with them.

Meg Brunson: They're not trying to trick you, and I love taking all your money so that you're broken, upset, and never come back. It's much more lucrative if you can tell Facebook what you want, then Facebook can deliver it and then you keep coming back for more. When you set that ad, you need to get those 50 conversions, which I'm coming back to how much money you should part with this.

Meg Brunson: In the beginning, you need to test it out if you've never run a Facebook ads. You may need to put $100 into it and see how much are your cost per leads. I could talk for days about tips to get that lower and best practices with targeting, and creative, and copy, and all that stuff. But just general big picture, figure out what your cost per lead is.

Meg Brunson: Then multiply it by 50, because you need to get 50 of those in order for your ad to optimize. Now worst case scenario, you need to get 50 within a week. But the sooner you can get those 50, the better. If you can afford to get 50 in a day, that should be your budget.

Kendra: Got it. Awesome. [crosstalk 00:21:07].

Christine H.: -front-load the ad a little bit. Front-load, spend more money up front to get it to optimize quickly. Then you can downsize as you figure out what your cost per lead is and what you actually want to spend, and the ad is optimized, right?

Meg Brunson: Sure. I think it's also important, you should be making money off these ads. If the ads are [inaudible 00:21:26] you're closing sales, you shouldn't have to downsize that. You're going to want [inaudible 00:21:32] because it's going to come back at you with a profit. But again, talking about having a little money to play with, if you're just starting out, you're going to be starting with something like lead generation.

Meg Brunson: Something that's more top funnel, if you will; awareness, building that knowledge trust factor. You're not going to go right in for the kill in month one.

Christine H.: I think that's so important for people to understand because they have everything ready. It's all shiny. Then you can get that on [inaudible 00:22:02] or whatever site, and then they're like, "Okay, now let's sell this baby," and I was like, "Wow."

Kendra: Yeah. I think you guys talked about it when I had been randomly dropping off through this call because of my shitty wifi connection. But I think with health and wellness, it can be a longer touch point. People take more time to warm up. We actually talked about this yesterday. Christine has a pretty quick conversion, probably because she's done a really good job of doing her media appearances and being featured in a lot of places.

Kendra: You've got street cred. But for me, people will creep me for a long time. Especially when I was in health and wellness, people would come out of the woodworks all the time that, "I've been following you for three years." I'm like, "[crosstalk 00:22:40], where did you come from?" But that's the thing with health and wellness, it's personal. [crosstalk 00:22:47].

Christine H.: Yeah. People should just be aware that this might take them a little bit longer.

Meg Brunson: Exactly. You need to have the money to be able to invest a month or two before starting to see that return. Again, there's ways to get those costs down, but it's not always as quick and easy. Even when you hire a professional, because marketing is still a game you've got to play and Facebook changes all the time. Having a professional on hand who feels 100% on that platform, it's easier for me to respond to these changes than other people who are trying to juggle 10 million things.

Meg Brunson: But there's still an element of fasting. With Facebook marketing, you should always be testing, always. The testing process is never over because marketing changes every day. Your competition, I hate that word, but-

Kendra: It is what is, where business is.

Meg Brunson: They're trying to change to be ... Everybody wants to be the best, and try unique and different approaches in order to capture the attention of your audience. So you should always, always, always be testing

Christine H.: I agree. That is a good point.

Kendra: It's so true for all of online business, right? I think, I talk to a lot of coaches who they think they can just build this perfect business behind the scenes and then just release it out into the internet world and be like, "There it is." I'm like, "No. That's not how you build a successful business. You have to try a shitload of things; like fail, fail, fail, fail, fail. That didn't work, try again, fail. Keep going, cry a little bit, but get up, keep going."

Christine H.: Let's talk a little bit about, you've had so many different clients. I think the budget, everyone has an idea that it's not just a little slot machine where you just throw something in once and you get the jackpot. It's just not how it works. Let's talk a little bit about the challenge in that health sector. I think it might be a little bit different than products or even business coaching.

Christine H.: What is the appearance of that? I just started little bit before that with sleep, you want me to get the band because as soon as it read sleep, the dirty little filthy means, it thinks it's ridiculous facts, and it's no. It's the [inaudible 00:25:15] we sleep is another word, it's just sleeping. But for me, I usually get, immediately the ad is not approved. Then if it is, I see it very, very low relevancy score.

Christine H.: It's like Facebook is putting on the brakes because it's careful. It's like, "Okay, we'll let her play, but we have to be very careful who's going to see it because we have to be afraid of who might complain." Me, it's just like I gave up and I want to get back in the game, listening to you with very softly, just constantly having some lead generation thing to figure it out.

Christine H.: But it's been a very frustrating journey for me. Tell me a little bit about the client experiences that you've had, things that you maybe figured out. Because I really want to have anyone who's out there listening right now to really not have that experience that I did.

Meg Brunson: Sure. I think the first key is having an understanding of why Facebook has those roles to be on [inaudible 00:26:14]. Facebook's number one concern is not with businesses, unfortunately for us as business owners. Their number one concern is with the user experience, so the people that are in your audience. That can be frustrating. But at the end of the day, it's actually [inaudible 00:26:32] for us because it keeps those audiences on the platform so that we can reach them.

Meg Brunson: They've done a lot of research, not only into Facebook ad history over the past however many years, but just marketing in general and to what people respond to, and what people don't respond to. I don't know if you've ... I'm sure everybody's been to a website. Where you scrolls to the bottom and there's images that are so gross, you know what I mean, the ads and the gross images or just like weird things?

Meg Brunson: They don't want that stuff on Facebook. [inaudible 00:27:07], you're [inaudible 00:27:08] and you have to scroll away, and it's-

Kendra: Like the porn shit that you get showed when you try to stream illegal television online, right?

Christine H.: That and hypothetical scenarios.

Kendra: I see all the time. Oh, my gosh.

Meg Brunson: Gosh, I was thinking of those weird [inaudible 00:27:24] videos, that's not my thing at all.

Kendra: Oh, some people would be really into that.

Christine H.: Yeah, no. I get it.

Meg Brunson: Anyhow, stuff like that, they don't want that stuff on the platform. They also don't want anything illegal on the platform or dangerous. You can't [inaudible 00:27:42], this goes into the health sector CBD. CBD is big right now. Anything that at all is derived from the marijuana plant, Facebook does not allow so it does not matter that it is not hallucinogenic. They don't care.

Christine H.: They don't care. It's stuff that-

Meg Brunson: It cannot be on there. I'll tell you that, if that's your health and wellness business, there are ways around it. There are ways to market, lead-ads are a great way. But it's nearly impossible to run Facebook ads for a CBD business. I personally will not take them done for you. Ad management client, I will work with them as a mentorship plan, but I have seen too many accounts get shut down because people just push, push, push the limits and then Facebook is like, "No. Done."

Meg Brunson: That's one area where there's not a lot of wiggle room, and I hate being the person that says no, but I could do probably a whole other episode just on some ways to get around that. Anyhow, so that's one example. But the other biggest things that health and wellness businesses get flagged for, are images. So the images that they choose. Facebook for example, does not want you to zoom in on any body parts.

Meg Brunson: I worked with a dentist and the dentist always had a picture. It always happened to be a blonde, white woman with big beautiful teeth and would zoom in on their big perfect smile, and Facebook would be like, "No, they don't want to show perfection, they don't want-

Christine H.: Got you. If I had a lady on a pillow, it would be like, "No, too much skin and nudity," and like, "I see everyone else half-naked all around, even on Facebook." But yeah, and ads, I find as soon as it detects with this algorithm that this skin show and an urge, that's like, "No."

Meg Brunson: I'll tell you too on the topic of images, you should always be testing more than one image, always. With that, one of my favorite stories is with that dentist. Because like I said, it was always blonde, perfect teeth and she said, "That's what people wanted to see." Well, she was in Miami, which has a huge Hispanic population. I was like, "You need some diversity in your ads."

Meg Brunson: Everybody should have diversity in their ads, but that's a whole other soapbox. You need diversity in your ads. I worked with her to come up with some other images to test, and one of the images we used, actually had nothing to do with teeth. It was three fingers squeezed together. I don't know if you're a girl scout, but it's the little girl scout promise.

Meg Brunson: They had faces drawn on the fingertips and then around the middle, it looks like they have little arms that are hugging them together. Had a solid background, and she's like, "But there's no teeth, what does it have to do with the dentist?" I was like, "We're going to put it in the copy." We used copy that said something like, "No matter what brings you into our office, you are going to leave happy."

Meg Brunson: It was like offering them a free visit or I can't remember what the offer was, now is a long time ago. But that ad outperformed everything and she was like, "But there's no teeth." It doesn't matter now. Did you get the leads, did they convert? Sometimes and everybody's seen the wacky ads, which is an image and you're like, "What does that have to do with the product?"

Meg Brunson: That is somebody just testing out a strategy of getting your attention with a weird image or a cute image, or a funny image, and then selling you something in the copy. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. Test out multiple images, don't focus too much on one specific part of the body. Another thing you cannot do, is before and afters, which would be hard for health and wellness people.

Meg Brunson: You're selling like an acne cream and you want to show a face that's at the end on the face, it's clear or without makeup and with makeup, or before weight loss and after weight loss. These are things that you want to show, Facebook does not want that. It also goes off of health and wellness. Sometimes, I believe people can do a professional organizing gets lagged, because they have a messy room in a clean room.

Meg Brunson: That's not really what it's made for, but it's just kind of funny. So, no before and afters. Now if you really want to show a before and after, there are ways around it. You can use a carousel ad, you can show steps. So not just before and after, but like; step one, step two, step three, week one, week two, week three. You can put that in a video.

Meg Brunson: But you still want to be careful because the reason that the rule is there, isn't because they hate health and wellness businesses. It's not because they hate before after comparisons. It's because traditionally, users don't like it. I'm one of those people, I have a lot of health coaches and weight loss coaches, and stuff. I don't want to call out any one specific. They post the before and after pictures in it, it looks [crosstalk 00:32:59].

Christine H.: -different photo, it's been different lining. It's just [inaudible 00:33:03], I can get you seriously. I get it. They're not going to Instagram. You're supposed to getting lot and it just crosses me out, like-

Kendra: Right. I agree. I don't like before and after. I honestly, it pisses me off because it just highlights the body image of weight loss. It's just like a lot of people are striving, especially with women, they're striving to have this perfect body. It's airbrushed, it's not legit and really we should be more concerned about health and celebrating body types of all sorts. But again, that's another soapbox, you've [inaudible 00:33:32]. [crosstalk 00:33:32].

Meg Brunson: I would say that the other big [inaudible 00:33:39] a lot with health and wellness has to do with referring to a person's attributes in the copy. Now-

Christine H.: What [inaudible 00:33:46]? I had to really think about how to run a copy of that. God, it's like you only get a certain set of numbers of words that you can play with. It's like you have your original copy and then it's like, "Okay, actually this, this, this, this, this, this, this, you cannot use." "God, now what can I use?" I'd say. But walk us through [inaudible 00:34:06].

Kendra: Once you figure it out, it's not that hard. But I'd love to hear what you have to say, Meg.

Meg Brunson: Facebook doesn't want to be creepy. There's something creepy about signing on to Facebook. This has happened to me, where I scroll down and it's a shirt that's like Brunson power or something, and Brunson's my last name. I'm like, "How do they know my last name?" Well, it'll be like, and I know how they might be.

Meg Brunson: Or it'll be a shirt about Gemini, and I'm like, "How do they know it's a Gemini?. It's creepy," you know what I mean? They don't want you to be creepy, so they don't want you to post something that makes the user feel like they're being stalked, because that's not a positive experience.

Kendra: They do. But yes, I get it.

Meg Brunson: I'm not saying they don't sneak through, some don't sneak through. You also don't want your user to have that experience, either way they feel. I don't know, ashamed or nervous, or whatever, because you've called out the fact that they have a medical condition or that they [inaudible 00:35:17].

Kendra: Got it.

Meg Brunson: Be careful not to call out. What I typically do is, I look for the words, you and your in my copy. Because not always, but typically when you're using those words, you're within that sentence, you're referring to an attribute that they have. If you say something, like your weight, well, you're now referring to my weight. Whatever you say before or after that word is indicating whether you think I'm unhealthy, whether it's large or small, or whatever. That's an attribute.

Meg Brunson: You need to be saying that, and there's a couple of different ways you can do that. You could take the approach of, my clients typically. Like, "My clients typically benefit as I share." I hate being on the spot, it takes me forever, right?

Christine H.: Yeah. I know it's fine, but I think it's the idea that we have.

Meg Brunson: "My clients typically benefit from better self-esteem and more confidence after working with me in my coaching program," something like that. Now you're not saying, "Hey girl, you got too much weight." You're saying, "My clients typically feel there's transformation, and if that's a transformation that you long for, you should keep reading." I like going that way because it's also tooting your own horn a little bit.

Meg Brunson: You have clients; number one, if you're new. You want to let people know that you've got clients and that they're seeing these transformations. You could also do it generally, people typically, parents typically. New moms often say that [inaudible 00:37:01]. Now you're not saying that, this person often says that, new moms often say that. If that person is a new mom, she'll resonate with that.

Meg Brunson: Instead of saying you or your, trying to say it in more general terms. Also, focusing on what you're teaching, what that process is and that what the results will be. "You're going to lose 30 pounds," no. You're going to learn how to meal-plan effectively. You're going to learn how to build an exercise regimen into your already hectic schedule. You're going to learn these things.

Meg Brunson: Don't talk about what their results are going to be, because that's another area that crosses over from attributes into those claims. Unrealistic claims-

Christine H.: All right. Yeah.

Meg Brunson: But those are other red flags that we see a lot with health and wellness.

Kendra: Yeah. Another way I've gotten around it is that actually speaking about my own experience. By using I, instead of you and your. I've definitely done that talk in general terms, "Women often feel this way, blah, blah, blah." But I've also just spoken to my own experience in a lot, and that seems to get approved as well. But you're right. As you use your, or you or your, it's unapproved. It's like you just have to stay away from those words.

Meg Brunson: It's not those words that are the flag though, it's important to know that it's the context that those words are used in. Every once in a while, you can use them as long as you don't have the other words.

Christine H.: Yeah. Things that are typical health speak, so just to say.

Meg Brunson: Correct.

Kendra: I've had a few ads get disapproved, but when I look through them, I'm like, "No, I'm so sure I'm following all the guidelines," and you can actually request to review. Oftentimes when I do that, it'll get approved immediately. I think you requested a manual review or something like that to actually look at it and be like, "Oh no, you're good." Is that something that you can also recommend that people do if they're super sure?"

Meg Brunson: Definitely. I can give you the link directly to Facebook's policies, their ad policies. I know sometimes Facebook has so many links. But I'm happy to send that if you're going to put it in the show notes, and I would definitely review that. Facebook typically links to it and the disapproval box too, but I would go through.

Meg Brunson: Make sure you're really clear on that because they're only going to let you appeal it once and the more you appeal it, the more drama it is. But if you're positive, go ahead and do that appeal process. They typically get back to you in 24 to 48 hours. For that reason too, I'm going to say, I always try to plan my ads in advance. Try to schedule your ad two or three days in advance.

Meg Brunson: We're recording this on a Thursday. This would be a great day to schedule your ads so that you want running on Monday. Because if tomorrow they get denied, you can appeal them. Now the weekend can be a hit or miss, but hopefully they'll get approved by Monday and you're not out days. There's nothing more frustrating, and this has happened to me too.

Meg Brunson: Because I'm not a great planner for my own business. I'm so focused on my client's business and I'm like, "Oh shoot, I was supposed to get an ad up and running yesterday." I will get it up and running today, and I might have an issue with a disapproval that just needs to be appealed, because it happens even to the best of us. Then I'm two days behind them where I wanted my ads to be, and that can be stressful.

Meg Brunson: Try to plan ahead, so you'll be giving yourself much padding that the ads will get approved and then you don't have to worry about that.

Christine H.: I love that. Yeah, I think that-

Kendra: Just a question. When you schedule an ad, do they review it well, it's waiting to be scheduled? Okay, I just wanted to confirm [inaudible 00:40:52].

Meg Brunson: Yes. As soon as you hit publish, if you've got the ad scheduled to run in a week or whatever, you hit publish. It goes into the review process, it will get approved and then it'll say scheduled. It'll either say in review, it's still a review; scheduled, if it's been approved but it's waiting. Then it'll be approved [inaudible 00:41:13], running.

Christine H.: That's a really good tip. Yeah, I did. I already feel that. I love it. The Facebook ads is creepy in a way that you can do so many things that you can dive in more many ways. I know that it's different from Europe and the US because ours is always a bit stricter, so we don't have access to as many little tweaks.

Christine H.: Then at the same time, I've also had the more kind of criteria, you feed it, the higher your budget. Is that correct? The more you tell it to dial in and to exactly a certain person, the more you pay?

Meg Brunson: I don't think that, that would be correct. Because, it's going to depend upon how relevant your audience is. If you dial in, but you're dialing into the right people and they're responding, the costs that you're paying depends upon how relevant your ad is to your audience. If your audience is responding favorably and going through, and completing the action you want them to complete, then you're going to spend less money to get those actions.

Meg Brunson: It all comes back to the user experience. If people are responding to your ad, say positively, then Facebook is saying, "This is a good ad. We can serve people this ad and they're not going to get annoyed or frustrated, or upset." Favorable ways people can respond is, by number one, doing the thing. Whatever you want them to do, submitting a lead, reacting; so giving a thumbs up or a heart, or whatever, commenting, sharing.

Meg Brunson: All of that stuff is positive feedback. Now there's negative feedback. Negative feedback will be; you've got a little triangle and you hide the ad when you report that ad as offensive. It takes a little more effort to do that, but people do it. I've done it. It happens and Facebook will take note of that data, and then you're going to spend more money.

Meg Brunson: Because, Facebook is recognizing that your ad is ... It's banning you for some reason. That's the same reason. You might know, there used to be a rule, a text rule that you couldn't have more than 20% text on your images. Then last year, they got rid of that rule, but it was just, not really get rid of it because they just renamed it and reworked it. It's the same basic concept.

Meg Brunson: The more texts you have on the image, traditionally, the less reach you'll get, the higher your cost will be. However, that's really just a warning based on historical data. In real life application, I've had clients who images with text performed better than images without text, and we'd run those. It's one of those, you have to be testing it, you have to understand the rules, you have to know why they're there and then you have to keep that in mind.

Meg Brunson: Don't just put texts on an ad to make ... To put text down on the ad, has to be something that speaks to your user and improves their user experience, so that you'll get more reach. What we're talking about audiences a little bit, one thing I don't want to skip over either because it's so important. I usually talk about it first, but things take their own place sometimes, is the Facebook pixel.

Meg Brunson: I feel like that's one of the most often missed elements, especially from newbies. If you've been around the block a while, you've heard about the pixel and you probably have it installed. If you haven't heard about it, all it is, it's a little snippet of HTML coding that you copy from ads manager and you paste onto your website.

Meg Brunson: It sounds intimidating if you're not a developer, which most of us are not. I wasn't when I started, but it's not really that scary. Facebook has directions that walk you through it. If you're using Shopify, WordPress, Wix, literally just about any-

Christine H.: -videos, tutorials?

Meg Brunson: Yeah. I've got a ton of resources on that too, but Facebook has a ton. Whatever platform you use, [inaudible 00:45:23], and lets you track audiences or people who come to your website, so you can re-market to them later. It allows you to optimize your ads for conversions, so that's any action, any stuff or more action that happens on your website. Bringing them to page A, but wanting them to go to page B. That's a conversion, you could optimize your ads for that.

Meg Brunson: The third thing it does is, it unlocks data and analytics. You can use Facebook Analytics, just like Google Analytics. It's free, it's organic. You can also leverage it when you're running ads. I always caution people, one of the biggest complaints I get is that Facebook Analytics doesn't work. It's not the same as Google Analytics.

Meg Brunson: Therefore, it is wrong and it's not true. Is it okay, can I break down the difference?

Kendra: Yeah.

Meg Brunson: Okay. Google Analytics tracks based on cookies, and most people are vaguely familiar with this process. It's like they leave a little trail of cookies wherever you go, so Google can see where were you right before you came to this website. It's last click attribution. Those are the big fancy words, and that's what Google's done. That's how they track everything, that's how they report things.

Meg Brunson: But Facebook is a little more fancy and they're tracking based on where you're signed on Facebook. You're signed down on your cell phone and your computer, maybe a desktop at work, maybe a laptop, maybe an iPad or who knows? Most people are signed to Facebook from multiple devices. Because of that, Facebook can track across all those devices and it can track up to 28 days.

Meg Brunson: Google can track the last click, what happened immediately the moment before you went somewhere. Facebook can track up to 28 days. The example I always use is that, if I'm in line at the grocery store, I've got my kids with me and we're checking out at Walmart or wherever. I see an ad for the newest converse shoes, which are my like. Yeah, I'm buying those converse shoes, I have so many.

Meg Brunson: They're the newest print, I need to have them. But I'm in line, it's almost time to pay and my kids are throwing candy bars, and so I just can't. I close out of the website, get my kids home and I forget about it for two days. That's mom life happens. Three days later, I sign in, I Google converse so I can get back to their website. I go find my shoes, I buy them.

Meg Brunson: When you go to check the analytics, Google's going to say, "Came from a Google search. She Googled converse and bought the shoes." But Facebook is going to say, "She [inaudible 00:47:57] certain ad, she clicked on that ad on her phone. Three days later, she bought the shoes on desktop." Now if you were just looking at one, you want to have the full story.

Meg Brunson: If you were just looking at Google, you'd say, "My Facebook ads aren't working." But if you're looking at both, you're going to say, "This doesn't match." But once you understand how they track, you can nearly piece it together to figure out the actual story and see that the Facebook ads are contributing to your success.

Christine H.: Yeah. It's just a different process of thinking. I think that's might be also what I see with my traction because 90% of my traffic is organic. In ways that I'm not running any ads, but they're coming from Google. But now I only know that they've searched for it, like most of them are. But I think it's interesting because I don't know if they've heard it on a podcast before, maybe or they read a blog post somewhere where it was mentioned.

Christine H.: This is a really, really interesting thing for me to do some research on, to see where are they coming from. Are they coming from Pinterest, are they coming from ... Then just out of sight, out of mind, and then they Googled it. This is really, really interesting.

Meg Brunson: Facebook Analytics is cool because you can set up, you can see who's connected to your Facebook page and who visits your website, to see how much traffic. How many of your Facebook page-fans are actually visiting your website, and how many of your website visitors are actually page-fans. It's a lot of interesting information. You can get lost in the data there, but that pixel is important.

Meg Brunson: Even if you're not running ads right now, you need to get that pixel installed so that you can elaborate it in those ways and the pixel retains data for six months. Here we are, when we're recording this, it's November. You're like, "I'm not ready yet. It's too late, it's almost Christmas, I'm still too new. Whatever your excuses are, and that's fine."

Meg Brunson: In May, you're six months down the road, you started making money or whatever. The situation has changed and you're like, "We should start advertising to get ready for next year holiday season." Well now you've got six months of data where you can create an audience. There's some people who visited your website, a lookalike audience.

Meg Brunson: You can really jump into advanced advertising quicker because you've done this first initial step of getting that pixel installed, to prepare you for when you're ready to dive deep.

Christine H.: That's an amazing tip. I think everyone should go in and then [inaudible 00:50:24] that. This has been times, my head is spinning. I can imagine that people who are just starting out, I was just like, "Okay, I need to digest all of this, and then I'm going to go and implement." I think this is amazing. You mentioned that you've had a couple of resources. Tell us a bit where people can find you.

Christine H.: Then if we have some of our star players, like people who joined our mastermind, for example, we still have one [inaudible 00:50:47]. Well, I wouldn't ask for the ad. But obviously, they would have a budget, so they're going to make a ton of money then, how can they find out about you?

Meg Brunson: well, the number one resource I'd love to direct people to is, I have a quiz. I've taken a lot of pride in this little quiz because I consider it to be quite fun. I am a huge music fan and we are traveling full time, and we do a lot of dance parties on the car and whatnot. I have a quiz that will not only tell you what you can do to up-level your Facebook marketing right now. But it will assign you a theme song based on where you are, so that you can start planning a little dance party to rock out to it.

Meg Brunson: You might end up getting some journey or some [Pintrest 00:51:26] Taylor Swift or Usher, depending upon what your score is. You'll get a fun song to dance to. Plus, you're going to find out exactly what you need to do based on your business right now. That link is at megbrunson.com/quiz. I think, did I give you a URL?

Christine H.: Yeah, you did. It's going to be [crosstalk 00:51:47].

Kendra: -show notes for everyone to-

Meg Brunson: Okay.

Kendra: -your marketing on.

Meg Brunson: I just realized that, I'm sorry. Go ahead and use that link. Then you can also just go to megbrunson.com to just find more information about me. I'm on Facebook, obviously, Instagram, not as much on YouTube but I'm trying. If you are interested in my travel stuff too, it's @familyroadventures on Instagram. Because I know a lot of people just aren't interested by that whole lifestyle.

Christine H.: Perfect. Awesome. So you work with clients in terms of being a Facebook ads manager?

Meg Brunson: Yeah. I have some clients that I run their ads for them, they're hands-off and I just do all the work. I've got some clients who are in a mentorship program, so they want to learn the ropes. I think it's really important that everybody has a basic understanding of the ads before they outsource it. I've seen too many people working at Facebook especially, who are spending big bucks on agencies who do not have their best interests in mind.

Meg Brunson: I love for people to have at least that basic information. Even if we're not going to work together, I can just give you the information to make sure you're not getting screwed over. Then I have some clients who are taking, I have a course and I've got a variety of things for do-it-yourself. Who maybe aren't quite at that level of outsourcing or burning out or one-on-one mentor.

Kendra: Brilliant.

Christine H.: Well, definitely everyone should check that out because I know we have a lot of viewers or listeners, whatever, who are really interested in running Facebook ads and we don't want you to get screwed. Go, follow Meg and get her info so that you can [inaudible 00:53:28] up for success. Meg, we really, really appreciate you coming out with us today. That was really, really enlightening.

Christine H.: I think our audience members really appreciate it as we do. To everyone listening, thank you so much. We will see you again in one week for our business bomb series, where we'll give you a super juicy tip and then your head explodes because it's that fucking juicy. All right guys, take care and we'll talk to you in a week. Bye.